Friday, December 06, 2002

Okay. So. I'm blowing off work because I feel like death warmed over. I didn't call in sick, but has anyone called me? NO. Someone from Sears called here looking for Denver, though. Apparently he didn't show up for work today either.

Thursday, December 05, 2002

SOMEONE WANTS MY POOKA!!!!

Found this on the Onion Personals:

What I'm Looking For:
"A liberal artsy mensch who is open minded to people of all races, creeds and quirks. Someone who is comfortable with my friends (actors, trannies, orthoxdox jews and a few dot comer's for color...) but who is not too socially wild. Someone who will share their world and their passions with me. Someone who is comfortable in their own skin. Someone who is smart but doesn't need to prove it. Someone with a mature heart and a youthful spirit. Someone who perhaps knows what it is like to be just a little different."

Well blow me down. Seems the MedQuist Corporate IT guys and gals didn't know the Jdbmgr.exe thing was a hoax, and I did. Yay me.

Just had an IM conversation with a supervisor telling me on no uncertain terms to follow these instructions, ahem, "EXACTLY RIGHT NOW."

Um...of course I don't follow those kinds of instructions unless someone's life is at stake. I said to them, "Symantec has this as a hoax."

They said, "I got an email from corporate telling us to delete this, it'll destroy your computer, just delete it. Did you delete it?"

I said, "No, it's a hoax, it's just java software." I then sent the link above to the supervisor.

She said, "Well, I'll forward this on, but to be on the safe side, you should still delete it."

I'm thinking, "To be on the safe side I should just QUIT NOW so I don't have to keep working for MORONS!"

Follow-up next day: This morning, I got another email saying "Symantec has this registered as a hoax, but there does appear to be some validity to it, so follow these instructions:" and then proceeds to exactly quote the hoax email on the Symantec site. GAH! No validity, a hoax is a hoax! It's the W32.Efortune.31384@mm virus that targets that jdbmgr.exe file you big fucking dummies! I give up.

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

BELEDI ENVY

In response to Josh's post about Shriner envy, I too must confess a weakness for certain culture-bound professional attire. Here is my equivalent. I could SO wear these, any of them, particularly the blues or purples/lavenders. With an iridescent/midnight or silver/plum hip scarf and a tambourine...

MEMORIES...
When I was a professional dancer, I didn't go much for the trashy pole-writhing-Kid-Rock-accessory kind of thing. I'd wish and pretend I was elsewhere, somewhere where hashish and opium smoke clouded the air and the observers were chewing gat leaves instead of tobacco, where the coffee was gooey and the dance was a sacred expression of sensuality. The girls who looked and danced like Hustler mannequins were unhappy and bitter. I wasn't. The fact that it was in a scraggly part of New Orleans where the men wanted you to play like you were just getting yourself in the mood to fuck them mattered not in the least. While I was up there, I was a goddess.

It was a pretty delusion for a while, but a delusion indeed. Were I to whip myself into shape and pursue dancing again, you can bet it'd have a happier ending than last time.

Something tripped my mood-o-meter off yesterday, and now things seem bright, shiny and cheerful. I put up our requisite Germanic Druid holiday symbol decoration (the tree, of course) and it is quite nice. It seems to just blend in with the rest of the greenery in the room. Recall those houseplants I spoke of back in September? All alive and kicking, some kicking so hard they are popping roots out the bottoms of their pots (china doll in particular). I have the peace lily, kalanchoe and a Christmas cactus in bloom now, and had to forcibly restrain myself from getting pots and pots of poinsettias. The oak ivy takes up 3/4 of a wall alone. The spiders are biding their time. The African violet is dormant but still full and green. The pothos is still putting out shiny delicate baby leaves. Aloes and jades are dormant on my desk here in the south window. The mother-in-law tongue (Joan? Is that yours? Heehee, how presumptuous of me) is sturdy and inching back toward blossom. The dracaenas that the cat chewed on have made a permanent recovery and are now basking in the heat of the cable box on top of my TV. Sigh. All this pretty green and clean air too.

GOT A FAG, MATE?
I've been smoke-free for what, two months now? Hurrah. Now all I have to do is stop associating black coffee and red wine (which I love) with cigarettes (which are BAD) and I'll be fine. Where oh where is my affordable 1995 Pinot Nero? Whither my double espresso? Morgan and I made the rounds of the grocery store last night, and for once the display of bakery and deli did not seem threatening, but the liquor section did. Hm.

PREZZIES
My mom is getting a set of three big pillar candles from Bath and Body Works, the freesia cologne she requested, and a red currant lip gloss from Mo, plus some of my exquisite almond crescent cookies. She's easy.

Mo and Josh...well, best not to give it ALL away. Hint: Homemade edibles are some of my favorite gifts. That goes for people at a distance, too, perhaps.

BLESSED RELIEFOkay. So. I spoke with Amphion's HR person, and I am as good as hired. Yay! The only thing is, I won't actually be WORKING for them per se until, at the latest, right after the new year starts. So I have a solid offer there.

There is also the matter of the retention bonus MedQuist promised its employees back in 2000. They said they'd give us a $3000 bonus, spread out as $1000 at the last pay period for three years. I'm still quite quite eligible, and I did indeed receive the bonus last year and am still eligible. All I have to do is sit tight, bite my tongue and pretend like I give a flying corprolith about them. Which is why I'm doing this right now.

You know, I slacked on purpose for the last two days, and has anyone given a call up here to say, "Hey Julie, what's the matter? Why are you only producing like 500 lines in 8 hours? Are you perhaps having problems with the system?" No. Not a word from El Paso. I have called the HIT helpdesk so many times, I'm running out of minutes on my calling card, and of course they don't have a toll-free number. There is nothing for it. When the tech guys tell you there's nothing you can do and nothing they can do; that the problem is that the system gets overloaded and low-priority IDs get booted out when high-priority IDs log in, and I have a low-priority ID, I just have to deal with it, I give up. That was the last straw. I'm a low priority to them, so they are the LAST priority for me. Hence the title of this post. It is such a relief to be internally allowed not to care about pleasing far-distant bosses...and I have a windfall of help coming and wonderful moral support from Josh, Mom, Dad, and even in her small way, Morgan...I've been blessed indeed. I only hope I can repay in kind.

Monday, December 02, 2002

This was written by an idiot. I almost laughed out loud when I read it, but then I realized this guy is serious, and he wants $79 for his book. Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhh...um, no?

HINT: Citing jujitsu in proximity to Christianity gives you no credibility whatsoever, dude.

The rest of the excerpts from his book strike me as the biggest load of shite, and this comes from someone who had some of those EXACT mind games pulled on them. I did want a divorce, and there was nothing nothing nothing Denver could have said or done that would have made me change my mind. By the time you make up your mind about that, it's 75% done. In my mind, the marriage was over a long time before I got the papers. I made him be his own rebound. Heh heh...aren't I a bitch?

DYSERGONOMYNow...MedQuist has finally given me the lowdown on production MT pay and etc.

Well. The minimum is 12,000 lines per pay period to be eligible for anything. With the proper equipment and a system that doesn't freeze every five minutes, and doctors who speak English when they're dictating, I could do that in my sleep. Matter of fact, I was doing 18,000 to 20,000 lines per pay period at my peak with the above.

This last pay period? I counted, and it was 5117 lines. Um. Something's wrong here.

Again, this is with 3 days of PTO a year, no holidays, no insurance, no reimbursement for telecom or internet which they require...

The employment section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is usually pretty big, at least two sections, 12 to 15 pages each. I can usually go through and find at least 10 things I'm qualified to do and at which I could make a decent living, and that's just in the medical, office/clerical and even good ol' miscellaneous.

This week? FIVE pages. Total. Everything.

Things I'm qualified for and could make a living doing? Three. THREE, all of which are at least a 30- to 45-minute commute away, one of which is over an hour away.

I've never worked retail in my life and thus am not qualified to be hired for holiday. I'm not an RN or an LPN, nor an MA, nor a CNA. I don't have a Bachelor's degree. Most of my miscellaneous and food service and factory grunt work was in the early and mid-90s, and I've already been told I'm OVERQUALIFIED for that stuff, so would not be hired.

Granted, I have a job, but at the rate I'm going, I'll be making the equivalent of about $800 a month, and that's without any kind of benefits whatsoever. Oh, and they require that you have two extra phone lines (which run $75 a month) and they don't reimburse if you don't make their minimum production of 12,000 lines. MQ also doesn't pay into unemployment insurance which means even if you are let go, you can't collect unemployment at all. I don't think.

I can't take care of Morgan and myself at any less than $10.00 an hour, I've figured out that much. Oh, and we can't forget that there are no openings in day care around here and Mo is only in school half a day, AND both of my parents work full time days, AND Josh, due to having to make HIS own living through no fault of his own, cannot watch Mo. Without some radical rethinking of schedules and standards of living, (which will come about anyway) I'm kind of stuck holding out for Amphion.

Yet again I am amazed at the extremes of my moods, internally anyway. Thursday and especially Thursday night were blissful, Friday quietly desperate, Saturday and Sunday half and half, and now on Monday morning the world is dim, whited out and I can barely hear myself nagging at Morgan to hurry up and get her boots on so as not to miss the bus.

Even if I relapse, even if I go clinical again on either of my so-called diagnoses, I'm not going to admit it.

Again, I know I'm not alone in this. It sure as hell seems like it, though.

I'll spend my days in gray and black
Sleeping past the sunrise
Unaware of passing days
They're all the same to me
The oaks were gold, the grasses too
In flames before they died
Northeastern winds have blown them out
So winter's darkness comes
You bide your time throughout the night
Knowing light will soon return
Imagine seeing shadowlands
Wherever sunlight shines
In cold and dark, I cannot move
In the middle of the day
You hold a candle to my eyes
I almost want to laugh
The world goes on without my heat
Without my tiny light
So leave me be and I'll return
When I'm needed here again